How to Thrive as a Mission-Driven Entrepreneur in a Broken System

Teresa Chahine: Thank you so much, Catherine. I love spending time with you. This is such a treat. Kathryn Finney: I do, you know, one of the things I always like to get started with, especially with guests that I know, is how do we meet? And I think it was at an event that was at Yale, my alma mater, and where you teach, that was led by Sheila Maccarlo, like is that Sheila? Marcelo. Teresa Chahine: Marcelo. Okay, I'm assuming this is the kind of podcast where you just say the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So if you want, I'll tell the story. Kathryn Finney: Yes, please tell the story because I'm probably going to mess it up. So please. Yes. Teresa Chahine: So basically the Yale School of Management hosted a convening about systems change education. How can entrepreneurship education be more about systems thinking and systems entrepreneurship? And it convened a lot of systems thinking leaders and entrepreneurs from around the country and around the world. And we did all the usual exercises, building dialogue and all that stuff. And at one point you just stood there and You just called everyone out and you said, we were meeting in a classroom and you said, know, I have to say something. Why am I the only black woman here? Why are we talking about systems change entrepreneurship and it's a room full of white folks? And there were like one or two other people of color and you were the only black woman. And I was like, damn. I love her and that's how we met and then we got to both sit next to Sheila Marcel actually at dinner that evening at the breakout tables and we got to know each other further and I invited you to come speak in my class on public health entrepreneurship which you so generously did multiple times and the rest is history. Kathryn Finney: You know, I think to give people context of New Haven, so Yale University, you know, very prestigious university in the world, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, is located in New Haven, Connecticut. And New Haven, Connecticut is predominantly people of color, particularly a really large African American population. So you have this sort of ivory tower on a, well it's not a hill, because New Haven's flat, but you know. kind of this gated ivory tower sort of community university smack dab in the middle of the hood. And so having these sort of conversations when we're surrounded by the community that we're talking about systems change, right? We're talking about creating systems change that helps the community, but the community wasn't there. And so for me, that was kind of odd. lived in New Haven while I was a student at Yale, but I wasn't from New Haven. And so was like, if we're gonna really do systems change, we have to get everyone involved. And so, let's take a step back and go back to the beginning, to little Teresa. So how did your experiences in your early life kind of lead you to this work that you do now? Teresa Chahine: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: Ha! Teresa Chahine: So when I think back to my early, early life, the main characteristic that dominated it was that I had the fortune of being born in the US during the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s. So I went to elementary school in Arlington, Texas, which is just a very sheltered, safe suburb. I went to an Episcopal school. We were welcomed and embraced by the community. And that's where I spent my childhood years. while children my age in Lebanon were hiding out in bomb shelters and watching people be killed all around them. And so for me, I think I kind of fueled up on this feeling that I'm so lucky and that that could have been me just as easily. And that I had so much positive energy kind of fueled up from my childhood. It was just so idyllic that when my family eventually moved back to Lebanon a few years later, I felt like I had the energy and the agency to get involved in creating positive social change. And I really think that that was one of the things that defined my trajectory is that I had that energy and restlessness to do something, whereas others felt helpless and hopeless because they had grown up in such a different context. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. So the contrast between the two environments kind of gave you an idea of maybe what the possibilities were. Teresa Chahine: And the nurturing that I received and the education and the safe environment and all those things that give you the energy to do something positive. Kathryn Finney: That's one of the things that we've talked about on the podcast before is the importance of safe environments, not safe necessarily meaning that there's not violence or things like that, but safe in terms of even the ability to think differently. Because I think a lot of times when we define safety, we think of it more the physical safety. We don't think of the emotional and mental safety. That's just as important, sometimes even more important. Teresa Chahine: Yeah. Kathryn Finney: And so you had in Arlington, Texas, this community that gave you sort of the mental safety and the physical safety, but the mental safety to be able to envision a different world. So when you went back to Lebanon, you had a totally different concept that you can bring. And so. Teresa Chahine: Yeah, it's a frame of reference like you're putting it when you go back and you see a different situation or when you go anywhere and see a different situation, you have this frame of reference like, wait a second, this could be so much better for everyone. Kathryn Finney: And so you spent the latter part of your childhood in Lebanon. Did you go to college there? What was the pathway back to the States? Teresa Chahine: Mm-hmm. I did my high school, undergrad, and first job in Lebanon. And my first job was a UNFPA project about reproductive health. I think not too different from what you did in the Ministry of Social Affairs. And then I always wanted to get a doctoral level degree just for nerdy purposes. I didn't really know what I would use it for. But I just wanted to pursue the highest level of education. And so I decided after that work experience to apply to a school of public health. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Kathryn Finney: You Teresa Chahine: And that's how I ended up doing my doctorate in public health and coming back to the US to do that, but to a totally different place in Boston, Massachusetts, which is like a different country, you know? And it's also 20 years later at the Harvard School of Public Health. And my dissertation was about social and environmental drivers of health. so I spent five or six years in the US doing the doctorate and the postdoc, and then I went. Kathryn Finney: Where did you do your doctorate? Okay, yeah. Teresa Chahine: back to Lebanon to help start Al-Fanad Venture Philanthropy, but never really cut the cord with Boston and kept going back and forth and started teaching at my alma mater, not as a faculty member, just as a disgruntled customer of my own education. Like, how did you all not teach me about social entrepreneurship? spent five years at Harvard, and now I'm figuring it out as I go along. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Kathryn Finney: Well, it's interesting because when you have these institutions like Harvard and Yale, and Harvard is even more so than Yale because Yale is surrounded by a community of New Haven. Yale and Cambridge, or Harvard and Cambridge, it's pretty much its own little city, right? And so you don't really have as much interaction with people who are kind of outside the Ivy walls as you would in some of the other institutions that are more located in cities or in urban areas. where you get more of an interaction. And so you started the first venture philanthropy organization in Lebanon. Can you explain a little bit about what is venture philanthropy? Because I think a lot of people maybe haven't heard that term before. Teresa Chahine: Yes, thank you for asking. So a lot of people are familiar with venture capital, which is when you invest in for-profit entrepreneurs hoping to achieve a financial return on investment. And most people are familiar with the concept of philanthropy, where you're donating usually large amounts of money to help create, for example, a hospital or a museum or something. so venture philanthropy is basically investing in social purpose organizations. You're investing in the organization itself, an organization that has demonstrated social impact, and you want the organization to generate revenue for itself, but you're not taking that back for yourself. That's why it's philanthropy. So you're watching the organization grow its financial sustainability and its social impact. And what you're measuring is the social return on investment for you. Like what is the biggest social impact you can create in your philanthropy? by investing in this organization. A really important thing about venture philanthropy is that it's not just the financing. We spend a lot of time on non-financial support, which our investees say is as important, if not more important, than the financing. We help them with management strategy and financial reporting and monitoring and evaluation and theory of change and all those things. So it's fun because you get to be in multiple startups. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: One thing that the entrepreneurs I worked with in Lebanon told me is that they're usually drowning in the day-to-day of their work. And it's helpful when they could sit down with me because I can see across multiple social enterprises and say, like, here are some patterns, here's what other people are going through. And so they found that really strengthening. Kathryn Finney: Now as a venture philanthropist, and I say this as a venture capitalist, can you invest in social enterprises that are for-profit, sort of like triple bottom line companies, or is it only those that are non-profits that you invest in? Teresa Chahine: It's both. And as Alphanard grew over time, we expanded our portfolio where initially it was and still is mostly nonprofits and we were giving mostly grants. And then we expanded into low interest and no interest loans and later on into equity and investing in for-profit companies, for-profit social enterprises. And now a year or two ago, We started a new company called Alphanar Social Capital in Lebanon that does impact investing. So we are achieving or hoping to achieve a social and financial return on investment. And all of that is reinvested in the social enterprises. So it's still venture philanthropy because it's not financially benefiting the investors, but it is also including for-profit companies. Kathryn Finney: I find- Kathryn Finney: And you're not looking necessarily for the 10X. think that the 10X, which very few venture capitalists actually did, but that has really driven particularly the type of venture PE sort of investing for the past, I don't know, 20, 30 years, is this idea to push, push, push, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow in order to generate the returns because you believe that only of the 10 companies you invest in, only one's gonna win and that one needs to win big. Teresa Chahine: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: Yeah. Yeah. Kathryn Finney: And so venture philanthropy has a way of realigning so that maybe you're not focused on one company killing it. You're focused on one company being the Facebook, but many companies generating some sort of return. And it's an interesting model that is getting more popular here in the United States. Teresa Chahine: Yeah, I have so much to say about that. First, as you mentioned, it takes longer and you're going to profit less. And a lot of people refer to that as patient capital. We're willing to wait longer for that financial return and you're willing to accept lower than market rates of financial return. And a lot of venture philanthropists talk about the missing middle where there are so many entrepreneurs that need this kind of patient capital. And the only thing available or the dominant forms of financing are the really aggressive venture capitalists or the really traditional charities. And nobody knows how to deal with a for-profit company that's also purpose driven. And I think that this aggression and need for really high financial returns really fast is a missed opportunity among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs because it forces you to make decisions. that aren't good for you in the long run and aren't good for your customers and stakeholders in the long run. And so I think there's so much space for venture capitalists that don't necessarily even identify as impact investors or venture philanthropists, but that just really care about the difference that their investees make in the world and are not pushing them to make decisions to grow too soon. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: too big, too fast, where it's going to impact the quality that they're delivering to this world. I think that's a huge problem. Kathryn Finney: And it's also very interesting because the traditional reason why you wanted them to grow really fast was to IPO. That was the golden sort of girl, like we want you to IPO. And there hasn't really been any IPOs in the past couple of years. And so that market has really dried up. So even the economics of a venture fund has changed quite significantly. If you look at it, I think this was in Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: 2024 if you look at some of the vintage and vintage is what we call like the year in which their funds started to invest. All the other funds that start to invest in that year, that's called your vintage, just for those who don't understand the term. And so you look at vintage from 2021, 2020, 2022, and most of the funds are doing like negative 10%. I mean, and this is like the average. So that means that there's a lot that are doing a much worse than negative 10%. Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: And so there hasn't, as a financial sector, it hasn't been doing so well. So venture philanthropy, I think, offers maybe a way to realign. So it's not so focused on IPO. Most companies are probably going to just get acquired. That's the primary path, at least for the foreseeable future, is acquisition. And in order to do that, you do have to have certain economics. And I think it could be really interesting to figure out how venture philanthropy can sort of build that sort of bridge. Teresa Chahine: Yeah. And some entrepreneurs are thinking about what capitalistic structures can be put in place so that you have options other than IPO and acquisition as a for-profit venture capital backed entrepreneur. A great example, a couple of episodes ago on my podcast, Impact and Innovation was Ruchika Fernando Pule, the founder of Ayora Health, which was acquired by One Medical, which was acquired by Amazon. And then he kind of actually tried to get Aguero back from Amazon, it didn't work, so he's starting over again with Liza Health. And the goal of all of this is to shift from a fee-for-service to a value-based care model for the US healthcare system. And so he's thinking about what structure would work for Liza Health, his new startup? Could it be, for example, a purpose trust, like what Patagonia did, where your purpose is protected? Kathryn Finney: Yep. Kathryn Finney: interesting. Teresa Chahine: So I think a lot of people are asking those questions like what could be alternate pathways beyond IPO and acquisition? Kathryn Finney: What are some other alternate pathways you've learned about? So we have the purpose trust. What are some other ones? Teresa Chahine: I think a huge one that's probably so relevant to your listeners is not exiting. A lot of people just want to run their own businesses as a livelihood and grow their businesses and create more jobs and potentially sell or hand down to their families. I mean, there could be many pathways, but I think a... SMEs, small and medium enterprises, are also really important when it comes to entrepreneurship. It doesn't have to be just about high innovation, high tech, high skill companies that could have financial value for an Amazon or for whatever other acquirer or IPO. I think the more SMEs we have in this country, the better. Small and medium enterprises, just like Kathryn Finney: Can you define SMEs? Teresa Chahine: you know, small businesses or medium businesses that are either family owned, individual owned, partner owned, and there's so many different ways to structure it just to create livelihoods. There was, I remember, I guess it's kind of old now, but a while back there was an article at MIT that made the distinction between innovation entrepreneurship, which is what we've been talking about mostly, and subsistence entrepreneurship, which is when you gotta create your own job, right? And I think right now, yeah. Kathryn Finney: And it's still interesting because that's where we're at. We're in the subsistence. Yeah, yeah, that's where we're at. Teresa Chahine: That's really important. I think so. So I think that's another path that people don't talk about enough. Kathryn Finney: Let's talk a little bit more about subsistence entrepreneurship, where you have to create your company because it is how you're going to feed yourself and your family. And I think now with the recent layoffs and obviously AI coming and disrupting completely the employment market, with a lot of jobs that are not coming back. They're gone for a while. And there was a recent podcast interview with former President Obama. where he was talking about how AI is going to disrupt the workforce in a way that we haven't seen since the Industrial Revolution. And so how do people make that transition from working a nine to five guaranteed paycheck, guaranteed benefits, at least as long as you're employed, you know you're gonna get your paycheck, it's gonna come in time, you know you're gonna have healthcare, you're gonna have these 401K. Teresa Chahine: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: to this subsistence entrepreneurship. How does one even shift their mind to go from one to the next? Teresa Chahine: It's so hard. And I don't say that to discourage our listeners. I say that to acknowledge it is really hard. And you might be doing this because your job no longer exists, or you might be doing it because you're just done with your employer and they're not aligned with your values, or you're just done with corporate America or you're burned out. Or because for positive reasons that you have a vision and a dream of something super creative that you can do. And we're talking here about like someone who's opening a wine shop in their town or a bookstore or some afterschool tutoring company, like it could be anything. So right now I'm working on a book called about entrepreneurial women. So far it's called Find a Way or Make One. That might change. I may have mentioned to you already that we're going to share your story and a few of the other women you've Kathryn Finney: Yeah Teresa Chahine: supported and invested in over the years. But we're also going to share the story of women who opened a bakery or a landscaping service. We were working with a developmental editor to help us develop the proposal who used to work for a publishing company and even just starting her own independent company on her own to do this work as a developmental editor. scared the hell out of her to make that transition from job security like you're describing to working as her own individual agent. But she wanted to do it and she did it. And there are so many barriers. A lot of them are actually just logistical and technical. Like what startup capital do you need? How do you manage your own books? All of a sudden you have like five job descriptions, right? You're in charge of procurement and accounting and Kathryn Finney: Yes. Teresa Chahine: human resources and the actual product itself. Those are things that can be learned, right? By listening to podcasts like this, by taking online courses, reading books, et cetera. There are other barriers that I think are more internal and that's lot about, that's partly what our book is about, especially for women. And the number of businesses being started by women, especially since the pandemic is on the rise. But there are additional barriers that women face, which you've experienced both in financing and in taking the leap. So we've organized the book into three sections where the first one is about just like imagining that spark when you have the idea. And we called the first chapter, someone should do this, just not me. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: because we hear that phrase so much among our women students. They come up to us with brilliant ideas and they're like, yeah, I really wish someone would do that. And we look at them and we're just like, you should do that. And these are MBA students at Harvard and Yale, you know? And so that's the first barrier. so taking the leap, the first section is all about taking the leap. The second one is about the nuts and bolts. We called it builds. so, which is, you know, basically like your podcast, like how... Kathryn Finney: What about you? You should do it. You. Yeah. Teresa Chahine: do you build the damn thing? Where do you, how do you work with imperfect allies? Even, you you can't wait for everything to line up. You just have to do it. The time is now. And the third section of the book is called Thrive. When you think about some of the questions we've been discussing, like what does success look like? What is your end game? Do you want to run this forever? Judy Faulkner is a great example of someone. She started Epic, the health, you know, Kathryn Finney: How do you actually do it? Teresa Chahine: electronic health record system that's a huge company. She never sold it. She's still running it. I think to this day she's in her 80s. Yeah. And also how do you then uplift other entrepreneurs and break barriers? Because you know what we noticed as we working on this proposal, entrepreneurship itself is a system just like the health system is broken, the education system is broken, the entrepreneurship system is broken. It's maintaining a status quo. And so people like you and me are part of Kathryn Finney: Good. Kathryn Finney: out of Wisconsin, right? Madison, Wisconsin. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Teresa Chahine: disrupting that ecosystem and that status quo so that more people can participate. So it's hard. Kathryn Finney: And so what were some of the key things you learned from doing this book that you're in middle of? Teresa Chahine: So some of the key things we've learned are that a lot of people have the misperception that someone else has something they don't inherently, not just like contacts or money or something, like some others are more qualified to do this than them. And it sounds really cheesy, but just knowing that you are enough and starting from there, you have something super unique that no one has. No one has the same combination as you in terms of your lived experience, your learned experience, your professional experience, where you're located and when you're located in human existence. And so that has value. We learned it's really important to draw on your lived experience and what speaks the most to you and what you find value in. Many people start a business that they would like to see happen as a customer. And so that kind of lived experience is super important. We learned that in terms of financing, I mean, you know this more than anyone, it is hard to get financing, especially for women, especially for people of color, especially for migrants and refugees. And you need to look for alternate sources of financing. Don't wait until a venture capitalist gives you money. You just have to start one way or the other. Like for example, a lot of organizations are whether... Kathryn Finney: Like what type of alternative? Teresa Chahine: They're led by state agencies or by nonprofits or by philanthropic and mutual aid groups are focusing on low interest loans for small and medium enterprises. Even like crowdfunding can sometimes work if you don't have high startup costs. Just don't wait until you have that perfect seed. Just start small, start when you can and grow from your own revenue and just by bootstrapping. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: and I mentioned Imperfect Allies, like there's all, you can always find someone who believes in you. Sometimes you can find an amazing mentor. Sometimes you can find an amazing support network, but also you need to work with Imperfect Allies and hope that at some point along the way, you're part of educating them and changing their habits, you know, and getting people on board. And so, yeah. Kathryn Finney: That's so interesting, the concept of imperfect allies. Teresa Chahine: I should mention also that this book, the idea for this book was pitched by my co-author, Brian Walker, who is a man who wants to write about entrepreneurial women. Because as a successful entrepreneur with three daughters who did his doctoral dissertation after selling his company on... women entrepreneurs in healthcare, but the book itself goes beyond healthcare. He noticed, like, why aren't there more stories and more cases about entrepreneurial women? And the imperfect allies notion was his notion was something he brought to the table. And he observed that by watching women like Judy, by watching women like Reggie Herzlinger, the first tenured woman professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. who when Reggie started at Harvard Business School, I think there was like no female toilets. Like she had to put a plant outside the toilet to let her colleagues know that she's in the toilet so that they won't go in. Who had to kind of like figure out maternity leave. I think there wasn't maybe maternity leave policy or something like that. There were no tenured women professors. Who had to figure out how do you establish yourself as an expert Kathryn Finney: You Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: in the topic that you are working in, not just as like a woman in this topic or a woman in this field. And so the people around you, you have to, if you can find ways to make them your allies, like don't wait for them to be the perfect allies. There's not gonna be another you to support you, right? Kathryn Finney: Yep, yeah, yeah. Kathryn Finney: Well, that's something we don't talk enough about. We talk about building your network and the importance of your network, but we don't talk enough about going a little bit deeper, which is this next step of building an ally. And it can be really challenging, right, because of the world we're in right now is deeply political and deeply polarizing. And so this concept of building a... creating a bridge to someone who may have very different ideas, maybe politically, socially, even economically than you, and how do you build that bridge where you both can win, that you both get something out of it. Teresa Chahine: That is such a good point, especially in this divided country. You cannot wait for somebody to agree with you before you team up with them. We will never get anything done, especially in public health, which is both of our training, unless we sit down with people who think very differently from us. And let me tell you, in public health, we clearly don't know what we're doing. Otherwise, we wouldn't still have all these public health problems. So we need to be talking to people who have a very different perspective. Yeah. Kathryn Finney: Yes. Kathryn Finney: Yeah, in different areas. I public health is so multidisciplinary. So it's not just health. It's environment. is everything from air quality to schools to everything kind of impacts health, particularly in the public health way, which is more global. And so you have to work with each other. And I would say even for other industries, You have to figure out a way to build sort of these bridges. And as an entrepreneur, as you're building your company, learning how to build bridges with those who may seem different than you, but there is at least one common interest you have will help you grow your business significantly. Teresa Chahine: Does anything come to mind in terms of your experience as an entrepreneur or the entrepreneurs you've supported and invested in when we talk about this idea of imperfect allies and building bridges? Kathryn Finney: Yeah, I mean, when I even think of Genius Skilled are fun. mean, one of our big LPs is Andrew Bosworth, who is the CTO of Metta. You know, definitely there's been some news about Metta recently. Yes. So, I mean, we can we can talk a little bit about that, who has had invested and actually, ironically, promoted my book. Teresa Chahine: I just finished reading Careless People. Kathryn Finney: build a dam, which literally kind of called out people like him. And so, but there is this shared idea. And one of the things that he expressed to me, which I thought was really fascinating about kind of like, why are you supporting someone like me? It's very clear on like sort of where I stand. And he said, you know, I talk to entrepreneurs every day, I've invested in entrepreneurs, and you said what needed to be said in a way that people could hear it. the people I'm investing here. And if I say it, it's heard in a different way. But if you say it, it's heard in a completely different way in which people can actually hear it. So it's like, give your book to these folks that I've invested in, because I know that the way you say it, they're going to hear it. And that is like one way in which a bridge was built. Some of the other founders, it's really interesting. You know, one of our companies and I think you've met with her Hafizah Mohammed, she's the CEO of Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: a company called Backpack Health, which is a pediatric mental health platform. And one of the things I always find so fascinating about Hafiza, who is like this amazing, amazing CEO on all accounts, is she started her company in Baltimore. mean, inner city Baltimore. She is a African American Muslim woman who is from inner city Baltimore. And her top customers are like rural America. And here's this company she started as her own need, her son had difficulty getting the type of health care that he needed, particularly mental health care he needs. There's a pediatric mental health crisis in the United States right now. And so she started this company that sort of does telemedicine for pediatric mental health. And she found that the problems of inner city Baltimore were very similar to the problems of rural Indiana. And both Teresa Chahine: Mm-hmm. Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: were pediatric mental health practitioner deserts. Neither of those two vastly different communities in pretty much every way you can think of both had a problem that there was not enough pediatric mental health practitioners to service the children of those communities. So here's this company she built that's now servicing rural communities in Oregon and Indiana and Kentucky. mean, places that you Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: wouldn't necessarily think of that a Muslim African-American woman would be welcomed and showed up, but the company she created is servicing a need in these two communities. And it's really interesting, even from a global perspective as an investor and as someone who's started a number of companies, I think we'd be surprised by how much we have in common, that some of the same pain points and needs that Teresa Chahine: Yeah. Kathryn Finney: women, people of color, people who are maybe lower in terms of the economic system. How much we have in common with each other. When I started my first big company, the Budget Fashionista, I remember going in to meet with, I'll tell a little digression, I went in to take a meeting at TMZ and Harvey Levin was there. This was like. It's such a often I have so many crazy stories, but Harvey Levin was there and a man named Jim Perattori who has since passed. helped Ellen start her TV show. So meeting with them, talking about the budget fashionista and like, you know, this online community I built. And this must have been 2000. I don't know. Maybe let's say 2007, 2006, almost 20 years ago. Sitting there and I'm talking and, you know, Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: The first thing they start to tell me is that I'm like Wendy Williams, which is interesting because I'm not. I'm from Minnesota. I don't look like Wendy, although she's a fabulous black woman. So, I mean, maybe it's the fabulousness that they got caught up in. And then and then they tried to tell me who my audience was. And being an Internet person, early Internet person, the beauty of it is that I knew exactly who my audience was because we had, you know, Google Analytics. knew exactly who was like. Teresa Chahine: Mm. Teresa Chahine: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: coming to my site and he was buying my books and all those things. And it was like, actually, even though was African American women running this site and very much clear, the front of the site, not hiding the fact of who I am, over 65 % of the women who came to my site were white. And they were mostly white women who lived in sort of urban, peri-urban communities who were shopping at Target. and other places who were trying to live this sort of creative life, but also didn't wanna spend a lot of money to do so. And so we're really attracted to sort of what I was providing at the Budget Fashion Show was for coupons and deals and sort of how to get things for less and things like that. And I found that really interesting, this lesson of like building bridges and like who you think as an entrepreneur, be very careful about who you think your market is. Teresa Chahine: Mm-hmm. Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: That was one thing I learned from the budget fashionista because you might be surprised by who's actually your customer. Like who's really using and really engaging in your product may not necessarily be who you think. so, but yeah, guess sort of getting back to social enterprise, which is something that interests me quite a bit starting. Teresa Chahine: Well, you know, I just want to respond to what you said in terms of the whole imperfect allies thing. It really, one of the things I've been thinking about the past six months is just whether this can be a time where we find ways to connect. I mean, I feel like as a country, we're just getting divided and as a world, we're just getting divided, but maybe things like... business, building businesses, maybe things like building social enterprise, things like reaching public health goals can be ways that we can connect. Like I want to spend more time in different parts of the country, other than the East coast and the West coast, working with people who are active on a variety of social topics who might think different than me politically and may have different backgrounds that might look different than me. I want to learn why and how they're thinking that way. One thing I noticed from even having different political backgrounds among my students when I teach public health entrepreneurship, most people agree on the core basics, right? Like it could be something like fashion and like household budgets that brings people together. It could be something like wanting people to be healthy. No one actually wants people to be unhealthy. I mean, maybe very small number of people, but like most people agree. Kathryn Finney: Yes. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: that they don't want people to live in poverty. They don't want people to be unhealthy. They just have different notions of how to get there. And so what I'm really craving right now is just spending a lot of time, whether it's on Zoom or whether it's in person, just meeting with people who are very different than me and finding out what we have in common and also what makes us different, because it's not a bad thing. Differences don't have to be a bad thing. Kathryn Finney: They're not, and I think what has happened is division has become big business, right? Keeping people divided has become an industry in and of itself that's made a lot of people a lot of money. When, like you said, when you sit down with folks, you find out that there are a lot of things that we all agree on. I always think of the story about Harvey Milk during the 1970s when California had the sodomy laws. And they were... Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Teresa Chahine: Mm-hmm. Teresa Chahine: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: organizing to sort of overturn these laws. And one of the things that he encouraged people, and I think this is actually where the phrase coming out comes from, calling, he had people who were living in San Francisco and other places call their family members and come out to them as gay. Particularly call their family members in Orange County, which is a traditionally conservative part of California. Kathryn Finney: And what happened was people, when they heard that their loved one was gay, it made it very hard for them to be anti-gay. Because here is somebody that I know and love. This is my son, my brother, my sister, my cousin, my best friend. And do I wanna create a law that is going to criminalize them? And it made people pause. And actually, that's how they overturned the law was because people called and connected and saw that, you know, hey, here is someone I know who I grew up with and we have the shared history. Even though they're a little bit different than me on this one thing, I know this person. We're alike in a lot of different things. And so I always think back to that of how, how do we get more of that of people calling other people and sitting down and having conversations? I know it's really difficult now to have these conversations because it's so charged, but also it's the only way we're gonna move forward, right? And I think entrepreneurship in particular offers a space to do that. Because entrepreneurs, we all are in the same boat. Now some of our boats may be bigger, some of our boats may be smaller, some of our boats may be a little leaky. Some of us may have yachts and some of us may have little row boats, but. we are all trying to build. And there's some commonalities there that I think could be really interesting in building sort of bridges between communities in particular. And so I know a lot of our listeners are gonna be interested in learning more about social entrepreneurship. When you, like, and I wanna ask you, how do you define social entrepreneurship? How do you, define social entrepreneurship? Teresa Chahine: So I usually just try to be really broad and inclusive about it and just say, you know, it's just about being more on, it's about being entrepreneurial, about creating social change. It's about picking a social challenge that you care about and thinking about how to mobilize resources in an innovative way to make that problem better. So just keep it super simple. But I think... I would like to expand it to make it even more expansive for the purposes of this podcast and say, if you can practice entrepreneurship of any form in a way that's not extractive, in a way where you're building value for yourself and thinking about the impact that you're having on those around you and on the planet, just be like socially responsible entrepreneurship. I think that's even more important, right? So social entrepreneurs are usually setting out to tackle social challenges, like how can it improve educational outcomes or health outcomes or whatever. But we need all entrepreneurs to be thinking about what is it about my work that might actually affect the ability of someone else to get the things they need to be healthy, whether it's food or clean air or water or transportation. or education or income, right? So I want people to think more expansively, even if they don't identify as social entrepreneurs, but to realize that something about your work will impact the factors that determine societal health in general, and that you can be a socially impactful entrepreneur no matter what your product or your program. So social entrepreneurs are creating products or programs to specifically change a social topic. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: But even if you're just creating some random device, how can you be investing in your workers and in your community and in your environment? And that can make you such a powerful and socially impactful entrepreneur. Kathryn Finney: I think there's this belief, and it's been marketed this way, right, because of some of the folks that have risen to power positions in the United States recently about entrepreneurship being extractive, and there is a way to do it. There's a way for you to make money and not be greedy. You can make money. Making money is fine. It's great, actually, in many cases. You don't have to be greedy, though. Teresa Chahine: Yeah. Kathryn Finney: You don't have to be extractive. so how, as an entrepreneur, how do you think about that? How do you think about building your company and creating it in a way in which it's not extractive? Teresa Chahine: I think if you think about thriving, you know, why do you want money? You want to thrive. Do you want to live in a world where everyone is thriving? Like doesn't that sound like a good plan? How can you make money in the context of building a world where everyone is thriving? Where you're thriving and your family is thriving and you have everything you need and more. and where the people who work with you and who work with the companies that are part of your supply chain and who are part of your community are also thriving. It's really having that mentality, I think, of being part of creating a world where everybody thrives, where you can absolutely get rich and you can absolutely make money. And it's not a zero sum game. It doesn't need to be at the cost of someone else. You don't have to step on someone else to get to where you want. to go, I think if you can have the mentality of uplifting those around you. And that requires a really long-term view. If you're operating from a scarcity mentality and a short-term view, you're just going to do everything you can to maximize your profit at the expense of people and other people and the planet. But if you take a long-term view of what does it look like for you to thrive in your lifetime and for your family and your descendants to thrive and to inherit. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Teresa Chahine: the world that they're gonna live in once you're gone, I think you're gonna make some very different decisions. Kathryn Finney: Wow, from imperfect allies to how to create a company that thrives, that's not extractive. Teresa, thank you so much for joining us today. It was an amazing. Teresa Chahine: Right. Teresa Chahine: Thank you, Catherine. I'm going to listen to all your episodes. I'm so excited about your reemergence, about the work that you're doing, and about the ecosystem and the community that you're building. Thank you. Kathryn Finney: Please do. Kathryn Finney: Well, I truly believe that we all can win. That is like my core belief in life, that everyone can win. And winning is different for everybody. We all have different versions. Teresa Chahine: That's your next book, Catherine. That's your next book. We all can win. It's kind of like the opposite of the book, winners take all. Kathryn Finney: We all can win. Yes, we all can win. Well, thank you so much, Teresa. And thank you all for listening to this episode of Build the Damn Thing. Make sure you subscribe and leave a review, share with friends. And until next time, keep building the damn thing. Teresa Chahine: Catherine you look at